Oil wars: An interview with Venezuela's former Minister of Energy Rafael Ramírez

First published at Phenomenal World.

On the 3rd of January 2026, Washington launched a military assault on Caracas, capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. In gross violation of the UN Charter, one hundred and fifty US aircraft bombed essential infrastructure throughout Northern Venezuela as the military raided Maduro’s compound.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the intervention was just how smoothly it went. In its aftermath, former Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez swiftly took the stage and embarked on a historic overhaul of the country’s Organic Hydrocarbons Law, paving the way for the privatization of its vast oil industry.

What explains Maduro’s downfall and what does it signal for the rest of Latin America? Phenomenal World editors Maya Adereth and Camilo Garzón discussed these questions with Venezuela’s former Energy Minister, Rafael Ramírez. As Chavez’s longest-serving cabinet member and President of Venezuela’s national oil company, PVDSA, Ramírez presided over the country’s developmental victories and rising global influence. Under Maduro he served as Permanent Representative to the UN before resigning from his post amid disagreements with the government. Here he reflects on the trajectory of Venezuela’s resource economy, its changing geopolitical orientation, and the future of the Bolivarian cause.

Maya Adereth: Let’s begin with your entry into the Venezuelan energy ministry. What were your strategic priorities when you joined Hugo Chávez’s government in 2000, and how did you cope with the dramatic oil sector strikes of 2002-2003?

When I became President of Venezuela’s National Gas Entity (ENAGAS), the question of oil was generating profound internal conflict. PVDSA, Venezuela’s oil company, was at that time pursuing the “apertura petrolera” — a policy in which the best oil areas were handed to private and largely American companies. Leaders of PVDSA had hoped that new legislation would legalize those contracts.

Of course, we did not pursue this path. As a result, violent conflict rapidly broke out, culminating in the attempted coup d’état of April 2002. My main objective as President of ENAGAS was to prevent Venezuelan gas from being privatized, handed over to US companies like Enron, and extracted from the country. This was critical not only because there was no technical reason to privatize the sector, but also because that gas was essential for our own energy and economic infrastructure.

One of the first things President Chávez did in response to the attempted coup was to change the key ministries. I was appointed oil minister in July 2002 with two core aims: bring the oil industry — then in open defiance — under control, and implement the newly enacted Hydrocarbon Law, which reserved oil extraction to the state.

In response to these policies, the 2002 oil strike paralyzed production with the demand that Chávez leave the country and resign. As minister, it fell to me to reestablish control of the PDVSA company and oil production. In January 2003, we were producing 23,000 barrels of oil per day. In March of that same year, we increased production to 3 million barrels, becoming the fourth largest oil exporter in the world. We managed to stabilize our production and sustain it until Nicolás Maduro came to power.

It must be said that the strike was not an act of sabotage by the workers. The workers were with us the whole time. It was sabotage by senior management, who facilitated a naval blockade of our coasts and halted production. This was a traumatic moment in which we lost 20,000 workers. With the 20,000 who stayed, we managed to revive production and recover full operational capacity. That was my baptism by fire in the oil industry and in government.

Camilo Garzon: What role did companies such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips play in the political disputes of the period? What happened to these companies after you left the ministry during the Maduro era?

Immediately after we gained control of PDVSA, which was the main obstacle to the Hydrocarbons Law, we began to redevelop a legal framework for the sector. The first thing we did was to shift from operating agreements to joint ventures. Operating agreements were a mechanism through which previous administrations had handed over the management of oil production to the private sector. We reversed that, and invited them to create joint ventures with PDVSA instead.

In 2006, we proposed to the large international companies, namely ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Chevron, Total, Equinox, Eni, and Repsol, that they embrace the new law. We got 31 of the 33 international companies to agree, and a nationalization decree signed by Chávez was issued. Overall, this was a successful process that ensured most companies would migrate to the new scheme and we could retain them as partners.

ConocoPhillips and Exxon, however, did not accept our terms. They were unwilling to work under Venezuelan law, despite the advantages of the proposals. We took control of their areas, and they resorted to international arbitration courts. ExxonMobil sued Venezuela for $16 billion before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris. We went, defended ourselves, and won, and the ICC said we only had to pay $907 million. Then they sued again for $10 billion, this time before the Tribunal of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington. We defended ourselves again and won once more, ultimately paying $1.6 billion minus the $900 million already paid.

One year after I left the ministry in 2014, ConocoPhillips also sued Venezuela before the ICC. That time, the Maduro government did not defend the cases adequately. We lost as a result and the ICC ordered Venezuela to pay $2 billion. Then Conoco sued us again before the ICSID, and once more we were charged with paying $8.3 billion total. Of that money, the Maduro government paid nothing to ConocoPhillips and left much of the debt to Exxon unpaid.

From then on, the companies began to file claims abroad. ConocoPhillips succeeded in getting a Delaware court to confiscate the assets of Citgo, a refinery we had in the United States, which was valued at $14 billion in 2014 and ended up being seized. It would have been enough to pay the companies what we owed them, but now it is being auctioned off for $5 billion to the United States.

MA: In 2000, OPEC leaders came together for the first time since 1975 and relaunched the organization with the aim of advancing a shared political vision. In 2016, OPEC+ emerged — a more politically powerful organization, but with a looser political purpose. What has been Venezuela’s position within OPEC’s internal debates?

The Caracas summit in 2000 was a very important meeting, during which Chávez took over as OPEC leader and managed to convene the member states despite the recent invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the war between Iraq and Iran. There were two important groups within OPEC at the time. One consisted of the Gulf monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar, which were more aligned with the United States. The other consisted of countries like Venezuela, Iran, Algeria, and Libya, which were more forceful about defending geopolitical and resource sovereignty. With a renewed production rate of 3 million barrels, Venezuela gained an important position in the organization’s political decisions.

The Venezuelan government had already advocated for the creation of a broader OPEC that would include Russia, but at the time, Saudi Arabia opposed this for fear of losing its relative strength. When Chávez died, Maduro neglected the organization and Venezuela’s domestic oil production, which fell to 1.9 million barrels in 2017. From this point on, Venezuela’s oil production would continue to fall, compounded by the impact of US sanctions. From the fourth largest oil producing country in the world, we plummeted to number 18.

The loss of political influence in OPEC was inevitable. With the military intervention in Libya, a weakened Venezuela, and sanctions on Iran, the Saudi monarchy no longer feared Russia’s participation in the broader OPEC framework. Russia’s invitation to OPEC+ remains a great initiative, however, because someone still has to defend oil prices. It is very telling that when Covid-19 caused oil prices to plummet worldwide, it was Donald Trump himself who called on OPEC to cut oil production and protect prices. This alone confirms the importance of the organization.

MA: PDVSA opened its first office in China in 2005. Today, China’s National Petroleum Corporation has producing assets in Venezuela, and there have been recent reports that Trump’s intervention has caused problems for Venezuela in servicing its debt to China. How has Venezuela’s relationship with China evolved and what stakes does China have in the current crisis?

For a hundred years, Venezuela was a satellite of the US economy. All our oil production was sold to the United States, and it was sold at discounts of up to 40 percent—$4 per barrel when the price was $11. We were an oil enclave for US transnational corporations.

When the Chávez government stabilized the industry, it sought to diversify oil supplies. It began within the region itself, with the creation of Petrocaribe in 2005, a cooperation agreement among the poor island countries. Chávez then pursued an agreement with Argentina and later expanded to the European market, where we made agreements with Portugal, Spain, Italy, and France. During that process of expansion, we formed relations with China with the idea of helping to build a multipolar world. In 2005, Venezuela was not selling a single barrel of oil to China, so these relations were absolutely fresh.

Opening up to China involved logistical changes, such as finding tankers with a capacity of 2 million barrels and formally inviting Chinese companies to produce Venezuelan oil. Chinese companies had access to areas that allowed them to produce up to 1 million barrels of oil per day. When I left the ministry in 2014, Venezuela was selling 600 barrels of oil a day to China directly to the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC). This was out of 2.5 million total exports—24 percent of total production. The great advantage of the arrangement was that, unlike our agreements with the United States, all payments from China were at market price. Yet throughout this period, we continued to send 1.2 million barrels, almost half of our exports, to the US.

The relationship with China also opened up other areas of cooperation. The Joint China-Venezuela Fund of 2007 offered domestic financing payable in oil. Another part of the agreement included the supply of technology and equipment. Including India, to whom we supplied 400,000 barrels, we had a market of 1 million barrels in Asia with two of the world’s largest oil importers. This was a win-win relationship.

When Maduro came to power, these plans and programs fell apart. Petrocaribe collapsed, and oil was no longer supplied through this alliance. The agreement with Argentina was blocked after right-wing President Mauricio Macri took office. The supply agreements with India were no longer fulfilled, nor were those with Europe. And with China, supplies were greatly reduced. Maduro also incurred enormous debt with China, estimated at up to $70 billion in loans, though official figures are unavailable. Our commercial relationship with China has therefore weakened significantly.

CG: What did Maduro’s intervention in PDVSA consist of, and what effects did it have on the country’s oil production? What are the main differences between Chavismo and Madurismo when it comes to the management of the oil industry?

Maduro sought direct control of all the country’s institutions. He started with the economy, taking control of the Ministry of Finance, the central bank, and, of course, PDVSA, where he appointed people loyal to him. I opposed that, and that is why they pushed me out of the country.

The government then began to imprison workers from the organization. More than 150 managers and directors were sent to prison, many of whom have been there for more than eight years. Former oil minister Nelson Martínez died there. It was undoubtedly a violent intervention, crowned by the appointment of a general from the National Guard, Manuel José Quevedo. Quevedo took charge of PDVSA and persecuted more than 30,000 employees in the industry.

So, the first thing that was lost as a result of the new government was human capacity. Maduro’s administration made the mistake of trying to control the company’s operating budget, something Chávez never did. This left the company without any money, and PDVSA came to a standstill. From a production of 3 million barrels in 2013, we fell to 500,000 in 2020, and today it stands at 965,000.

Since Maduro rose to power, we have lost almost 75 percent of our oil production capacity. That had never happened in any oil-producing country in the world, unless it was involved in an internal war. But in Venezuela, what happened was an internal war by the government against the oil industry. Much of the current production is sustained by Chevron, which pays no royalties or taxes.

In an oil-producing country with a rentier model imposed by transnational corporations, the collapse of the oil industry often means the collapse of the country itself. The Venezuelan economy contracted by 80 percent. The minimum wage fell from $450 per month to $2 per month. And 8 million people left the country because it became impossible to live there.

The fundamental difference between Chávez and Maduro is that the former leveraged oil in service of the population. Maduro, on the other hand, privatized oil and placed it in the hands of his political operators. All our social programs were dismantled. We went from a country that had a national developmental and redistributive project to one that was decimated, internationally isolated, without institutional legitimacy, and lacking strategic leverage.

MA: During the 1950s, Venezuela was the largest destination for US foreign investments and one of its largest sources of revenue. Is Trump trying to restore the 1950s model, and if so, should we understand this as pure resource control, price-setting control, or something else?

The first thing to say is that any military intervention in Venezuela must be firmly opposed. The capital city, Caracas, was bombed for the first time since we became a republic. The new US national security policy talks about reviving the Monroe Doctrine. This is a clear regression by the United States to the 1950s: the time when Latin America was dominated by military dictatorships in the context of the Cold War. Today it is Venezuela. Tomorrow it could be Colombia. After that it could be Mexico, or any other country.

Trump’s attempt to control the oil industry is especially concerning for Venezuela, because we would return to the concession period. Transnational corporations began to exploit oil in the country from 1920 until 1976, when it was nationalized. During those years, the United States did whatever it wanted with Venezuela. It took more than 50 billion barrels of oil without paying royalties or taxes. That changed with the nationalization of oil and, later, with Chávez, the nationalization of the oil belts of Orinoco.

The US claim — which the interim government has allowed — that profits from Venezuelan oil exports should go to a fund managed by the US Secretary of State, is an intervention that has not happened in any country since World War II. It has no political or legal basis. This will not be sustainable over time, but in order to resist it effectively Venezuela must have the capacity to increase production.

CG: Venezuelan oil production is already committed to domestic consumption and bilateral contracts primarily with China, Iran, Russia, and Cuba. What are the prospects now for fulfilling these contracts under US supervision, and how is OPEC’s role being reconfigured in light of this new situation?

If the United States were to control oil production in Venezuela, OPEC would be hugely weakened because of the model it represents for producing countries. The nationalization of oil in Venezuela had an international significance — it represented a vindication for all oil-producing countries who, thanks to their control over production and exports, were able to implement OPEC policies. If a country as important as Venezuela backs down from this model, any other country could follow in the face of a military confrontation: Libya, Iraq, or Iran. This would be disastrous for OPEC.

A number of US transnational companies have already told the White House that they will not return to Venezuela. Companies have to respond to their direct bonds and make decisions that make practical sense. So it will not be easy for Trump to get companies to invest in Venezuela as he wants. The current oil market is marked by abundant production, and there are many opportunities for Exxon and Chevron to seize, Guyana being just one example. There, the companies have guaranteed production of 1 million barrels of oil by 2027, with only 1 percent royalties. They are not desperately looking for oil fields.

But, in any case, Venezuela remains very important due to the simple fact that we can certify the largest oil reserves on the planet. The United States has about 32 billion barrels in reserves, which at the current rate of consumption will last for seven or eight years. This is a strategic problem for them, especially since they have discarded the energy substitution policies of the Biden agenda. They need oil.

Venezuela’s current production agreements are with China and Russia, each of which could produce up to 1 million barrels. But since Chávez’s death they have halted their investments. The Chinese only produce 100,000 barrels through the joint venture of Petrosinovensa. They could produce 1 million, but they did not invest under Maduro. The details of the other agreements with Iran and Cuba, which are not for production but for supply, are secret. Obviously, the United States is seeking to undermine these agreements so that oil no longer reaches Cuba.

Russia and China have said, albeit very timidly, that their projects in the country are still legally in force. But I think everyone is waiting and probably negotiating with the Americans. Neither Russia nor China is going to go to war to maintain their production in Venezuela, which is already at very low levels.

CG: What do you think should be the guidelines for a plan to rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry? What efforts are necessary to ensure that its profits can be used for economic reconstruction rather than being syphoned out of the country?

The problem we face with oil is not a technical one, it is a political one. In Venezuela, we need a return to the rule of law and to some degree of normality. Only then will our oil industry be able to undergo some kind of reconstruction, because the damage done to it has been very great. We must release all political prisoners, call back all the managers and workers who left the company out of fear, and make a national agreement to rebuild oil production. We need to create the political and economic conditions, within the boundaries of a sovereign and unified nation, that will allow us to focus on this issue.

The Orinoco oil belt is the country’s newest large oil-producing area. The capacity is there but it is currently unexploited. This area should be prioritized and its oil dividends should be used to meet human needs, flowing into wages and food; and then we can move on to the most problematic and oldest areas, such as Lake Maracaibo. Trump, of course, wants to seize the monetary gains from Venezuelan oil. But even before his intervention, Maduro’s allies were reselling oil to a ghost fleet of buyers who received it at a 25 percent discount and paid for it in cryptocurrency. Oil must be sold again at market prices and that money must go to the Central Bank of Venezuela so that it can be injected into the national economy, as the law requires.

A government of national unity is necessary to enshrine the reconstruction of the oil industry as a national priority. Then the political battle can be fought over what we should do with these revenues, whether they should go to the national bourgeoisie or to the people. But this conversation can only take place once we have rescued the management of oil.

Although Venezuela is an oil-producing country, it does not actually depend on domestic oil consumption. Almost all of its energy comes from water sources. But in the short and medium term, at the global level, there is no technology or energy source capable of replacing oil. The best proof of this was when Covid shut down the economy of the developed world. When they tried to restart it, wind energy and electric cars did not come to the rescue. What countries asked for was oil, and more of it than before. This indicates that oil, and Venezuela, will continue to play an important role in global energy demand.

The essential transition for Venezuela will be out of the oil rentier model. We made a great effort in that regard during the last year of President Chávez’s life and prepared something called the Plan de la Patria, with the help of the China Development Bank. When Chávez died this all came to a standstill. But that is a task that new generations of Venezuelans from now into the future will have to complete.